eugenesis-text

They found Slugslinger and Misfire in a nearby corridor, their bodies limp with laser burn.
‘I hope you two won’t be visiting me later,’ said Sygnet.
Slugslinger looked himself over, as if noticing the damage for the first time. ‘You think this is bad
You should see the other guy.’
‘We’ve just chased an Autobot spy halfway across Cybertron,’ explained Misfire. ‘I reckon it was him
that killed the boss.’
‘How did he manage that then’ asked Blitzwing gamely. ‘And where’s the body’
There was a pause while Misfire reconsidered. ‘I dunno. I don’t think we’ll find out now, either.’
‘We’ve just killed the little bastard. Shot him down over the Iaconian border.’ Slugslinger roared with
laughter.
Sygnet nudged Blitzwing and they slipped away, leaving the Targetmasters to work off their postbattle
rush.
The throne room was unusually bright when they arrived. Lights that were usually turned to lowwatt
and zero-glare were cranked to maximum burn, dragging each detail kicking and screaming out of the
shadows. Soundwave was nowhere to be seen, but the room was crowded with early arrivals: Razorclaw,
Cyclonus, Platinum, Ramjet, Roadblock, Krok, Motormaster, Pounce, Fulcrum and Onslaught. The leader
of the Combaticons was reprimanding Swindle and Vortex.
Cyclonus made a beeline for Sygnet. ‘How is he’
‘Scourge Believe me, Fulcrum and I are doing our best.’
‘Come on, Sygnet! It’s not as if he was teetering on the brink of stasis-shutdown. It was just a chest
wound.’
‘A chest wound that ruptured 70% of his neuranet. And by the way, Cyclonus, it’s looking more and
more likely that the damage was self-inflicted. It’s like he detonated a low-yield body-bomb, something just
potent enough to take him off-line.’
‘Then why are you taking so long to rebuild him’
‘Look, if Scourge was a normal Decepticon he’d be on his feet by now, but he isn’t normal. He’s not
the Thundercracker I used to know. Like you, his techno-biology is horrifically advanced. It’s like repairing
a hyperdrive with tweezers and a blowtorch, you know I don’t have the right tools.’
‘Sounds like an excuse to me.’ Cyclonus nudged Sygnet’s chin with his knuckles. ‘If it was anyone
else…’
Sygnet was knocked off balance by a robot pushing past. ‘Watch where you’re going, Swindle!’
‘Aw, shut up!’
‘Don’t worry about him,’ said Onslaught, wandering over. ‘He’s just spent five days in the Stanixian
pools with Vortex and the Stunticons. We got word that the Autobots were stockpiling munitions there.’
Sygnet shrugged. ‘And’
‘Nothing. We’d been tricked.’
‘Misinformation, eh Autobots can be so underhand.’
‘That’s rich coming from you.’
Soundwave shut everyone up simply by walking into the room. He slipped onto the throne and –
although no one could see it behind his mouth plate – smiled at the crowd. ‘No doubt you all think you’re
here because of Galvatron’s disappearance. Wrong. Galvatron is his own master. He can take care of
himself. I’ve called you here because of something far more pressing: a signal we’ve been awaiting for five
hundred years.’ He looked at Onslaught, Platinum and Motormaster. ‘Some of you had not yet been
created when Doubleheader “defected” to the Autobots using Sygnet’s fake Autobrand. Some of you
actually believed that our so-called turncoat had actually sided with the enemy.
‘At 0280 micro-cycles yesterday, Doubleheader activated his body-bomb, simultaneously transmitting
a homing signal that allowed the Comms team to pinpoint his last location: the Diosys arena, a few miles
from the Helio Generator Complex.’
‘That’s the site of the old Archives Centre,’ said Platinum. ‘I was right. They did go underground.’
‘So it would seem. And if we’ve received Doubleheader’s signal, it means that Rodimus is dead, and
that the Autobots are in disarray. So gather your squads: we leave for Iacon in one day.’